The main reason to rinse after inhalers is NOT the taste. That is a benefit because it makes you rinse. You need to GARGLE for 30 seconds (20 seconds is one round of old macdonald had a farm) or it will tear apart your vocal cords. I have an aunt who likes to sing at church an darn near lost her ability to sing or speak at any volume because she also has asthma and refused to rinse after using her inhaler. It isn't good enough to just rinse, gargling will get it off your vocal cords and areas where just rinsing won't. It took a very short time to create big problems for her.
Your main point, to look after yourself first, is more critical than you know. I didn't do this for years. Even right after surgery I didn't take the full amt of time to recover before I was doing with kids, or back at work when working, or down and dirty having to restrain Wiz in a rage. About six years ago my body said NO. NO NO NO I WON"T WON"T WON"T. and it quit. doing almost ANYTHING was incredibly, excruciatingly painful. My muscles would spasm for weeks at a time. Think of the charley horse that wakes you in the middle of the night. Now imagine your body doing that all over and staying that tight for weeks. My skin practically disintegrated in spots, and in other places the nerves freaked and I itched down deep in the bone to the point I would scratch so deep it took WEEKS to heal and sometimes was so deep they wanted to do stitches but couldn't because it was so long and wide. I would go to sleep with socks taped on my hands and wake up with them off and bits of tissue under my nails. Even walking out to the car was a true ordeal, and the motion of the car made me vomit. Try dealing with a ride to a doctor 75 miles away like that.
It has taken six YEARS to get my body to sort of calm down. I can now go out maybe once a week or so, and once a month I have to go to get my medications from my doctor's office and I do a sam's run. It still takes five to eight days to recover. And all of this is without the migraines.
If I had paid more attention to me, taken better care of me, I firmly believe that much of this would not have happened. Heck, my body would not even tolerate clothing much of the time. any band that goes around my body, like a waistband or socks or even sleeves that are not super loose, makes my body freak and start to swell. I have not worn a bra in five years because twenty minutes in one and I have swollen up six INCHES. If I wear a waistband, I not only swell, my digestive tract freaks out and will spend days in a spasm like you would not believe. I almost ended up in the hospital at one point because I spent over eight HOURS on the toilet because getting up or moving meant it freaked out again. I swear it felt like it wanted to just crawl out of me from both ends. husband and my mom wanted to take me to the hospital but I refused because I couldnt be away from the toilet for even five minutes.
PLEASE remember to care for yourself. I hate that I pushed my body so hard it kept me from my family, from things I truly enjoyed, and from the world. If I had taken better care of me, pushed others into taking some of the things onto their own shoulders, then my body probably would not have collapsed the way it did.
The infection is a WARNING. Listen to your body and care for it. One of the things my body did during that time was get cellulitis. By the time I got to the hospital, they thought it might have progressed to sepsis, and they thought that I was very very close to either dying or losing my leg. They kept me on quarantine for five days and in the hospital for a total of seven days. I got LUCKY in that my infection responded to medications, but it cost me my teeth. the heavy doses of IV antibiotics ate my teeth from the inside out, and combined with the vit D deficiency that I have, well, I have no teeth now. I am adjusting fine, but let my body be a warning, please.
I don't talk about all of this to anyone really. But I am telling you so that you can hopefully take better care of yourselves and you can avoid a reaction this bad.
